Retirement - The Joy of Doing Nothing

As soon as I announced my intention to retire, people started asking me what I planned to do in retirement. This puzzled me because to me, the whole idea of retirement was not having to make plans. It made me vaguely uncomfortable as though I was entering some uncharted territory. Truth be told, I was already quite well-versed in the art of doing nothing and was looking forward to doing it full time. 

Jokes aside, I gave the question some thought. And I answered somewhat evasively that I had nothing specific planned but was thinking about a few things. I might start volunteering more, learn a new language, do more writing, etc. True, I have not really done much of these though I had every intention of doing them and still have. As you will have noticed, this blog itself has seen just a few new posts since my retirement.

The idea of suddenly finding a major part of your day suddenly becoming free may be unsettling. On an average work day, I must have dedicated around ten hours to my job. Wonder of wonders, I find that I am not exactly sitting twiddling my thumbs trying to decide what to do with all that free time. I seem to have seamlessly moved into retirement where the said hours have been swallowed up in my engaging in The Art of Doing Nothing. I am going to call this TADON. Nothing succeeds like acronyms, don't you agree? Or even better, Tadon which sounds like a legitimate philosophy. I should probably trademark this and start running seminars. It is a good plan but paradoxically it would mean doing something! 

Will doing nothing result in boredom?  Perhaps, but we should allow ourselves to be bored from time to time, argues Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Harvard. We normally do not like to be bored because there is something uncomfortable about being alone with ourselves. We are forced to face difficult questions that we have carefully tucked away and we would rather choose electric shock over that (See https://vulcanpost.com/896837/you-need-to-get-bored-more-harvard-business-review/). But if we stick with it patiently, “You’ll start digging into the biggest questions in your life—purpose, meaning, coherence, and significance. And who knows? You might just get happier”, says Brooks.

Let me hasten to add that doing nothing is not the same as experiencing boredom. Nor is the goal of retiring, to experience boredom. Being bored is having nothing to do and being uncomfortable with that. The art of doing nothing is to be at peace with it. Doing nothing sounds like a waste of time but it serves an important purpose. In fact, everyone should be able to comfortably sit doing nothing every now and then. Ironically, if you try hard to do nothing, it can be exhausting. It requires letting go of control and allowing us to just experience the moment without any effort from our part, without the fear of missing out on something. Peace just slips in at such times. 

I do not want to give the impression that I am enjoying some newfound peace. I am just enjoying not having a fixed office routine. Otherwise not much has changed. Occasionally, I feel a little guilty about not engaging in something productive. But I refuse to force myself to be busy just for the sake of it. Apart from the job, many of the other things that I did before continue to engage me and I am slowly increasing my involvement in them. I also manage to travel a little.

The biggest impediment to a tranquil life has been the increasing time spent on an increasingly larger smartphone. But the aging joints in my hands keep reminding me that I should reduce this. The greatest joy has been in going for walks with my better half and with friends. I have also managed to read more. Watching mystery shows on TV is a guilty pleasure indulged in without the guilt! And there are periods when I do nothing. With all these, I have also been able to avoid the long neglected chores around the house! All this is not to say that there are no challenges but life is definitely less hectic.

Retirement can mean different things to people. As the trajectories of our careers vary, so will our retirement paths. For some it may mean that they are fully occupied with new things e.g. volunteering full time; for others, it’s a time of relaxation and travel, and spending time with children and grandchildren. Some will continue to enjoy working in their field, writing books, conducting seminars, etc. and not really leave their vocations. Some even say they are busier after retiring than ever before!

Whatever be the path, I think retirement need not be uncomfortable if one remembers that a job does not define a person. At least I believe it in my case. Retiring from a job is just that. It is not retiring from life.

Metamorphosis

I seem to have planted unknowingly a couple of bushes in my backyard which bloom profusely and humming birds and bees are constant visitors for their nectar. I do see some butterflies too in my backyard including the occasional monarchs in their migration which will now and then land on these blooms and go on with their journey after a fill. 

A few years ago when I saw a passion flower vine (passiflora vitifolia) at the local nursery, described as 'butterfly attractor', I had to get it and plant it in my backyard. For about four years it grew steadily putting out foliage but it did not bloom, testing my patience. Needless to say no butterflies approached it. And then finally one summer day, a brilliant scarlet flower about 4 inches across appeared. 
Almost simultaneously a pair of orange winged butterflies appeared out of nowhere. How did they know? 

After a few days I noticed a couple of caterpillars feeding on the leaves of the plant but that seemed to be it. I think that year we got maybe a two or three flowers and just a little activity from the butterflies. We probably missed the rest of the life cycle of the butterfly. The following year we had more flowers and more activity from the passion butterflies. These live just for a few weeks yet the descendants of the previous visitors somehow managed to find their way into our yard a year later! 

The orange butterflies (which I found out were known as Passion Butterflies) were new to the yard and they came specifically for the passion flower vine. While I was expecting that the passion flowers attracted the creatures for the nectar, I had no idea that the passiflora vine is the host plant for the Gulf Fritillary aka passion butterflies which means that they lay their eggs on the vine. Once the eggs hatch, the black and orange caterpillars that emerge feed exclusively on the leaves of the vine. So soon after the appearance of the butterflies a few caterpillars emerged and started nipping away at the leaves. They fed voraciously and decimated the plant. A few days later I started noticing that they were hanging upside down from the pergola and slowly entered the pupae. 

The pupae were unremarkable and easy to mistake as dried leaves. They looked small and fragile but they hung on even in strong winds. We became fascinated by them wondering when the mature butterflies would emerge. For days we waited but we invariably missed the actual moment when they emerged. It was a long wait but we finally managed to see one that was just half way out. This was very exciting indeed.

As you might know (or not - I did not and  had to look it up) when it emerges from the chrysalis the butterfly pumps fluid into its folded wings to expand and dry them before it can fly. It is this process that we managed to witness. The butterfly finally opened its wings and took its maiden flight. The colours were simply magnificent. What had entered the chrysalis was a somewhat scary looking hairy caterpillar. What emerged was an elegant beauty. What a transformation!

I had followed the whole process with thrill - the caterpillar consuming the leaves and rapidly growing, then entering a phase of quiet meditation as it were and finally emerging transformed into a beautiful and free being. Throughout this period, the butterflies would appear mid-mornings when the sun was just beginning to feel warm and stay till mid-afternoon. Unlike the other butterflies which briefly paused to feed on the flowers, these sometimes as many as four would fly around the bush constantly providing a visual delight. I wondered where they rested for the night as butterflies do not seem to build nests. Apparently they just find a safe place in a tree, bush or crevice and simply doze. They are solar powered and need the warmth of the sun to move around so they become inactive at night. Life does not get simpler than that!

So for a few days, the butterflies danced around in the yard hovering over the now leafless vine or settling for a drink on one of the other bushes. Then one day they just left I know not where to. Since the vine did not survive the onslaught of the caterpillars, I do not expect they will return this year. I may also have contributed to the demise of the plant by neglecting to check the water line. Sigh. 

As I ponder the fascinating life of the butterfly, I think we too have the ability to enter the cocoon of withdrawal and contemplation and the potential to transform ourselves. Our scriptures actually prescribe four stages of life - student, householder, retiree, and renunciate*. That is, acquire life skills, lead a productive life earning wealth and contributing to society, then withdraw from active life, and finally renounce everything to pursue enlightenment. The Buddha is probably the most well-known example of one who entered a prolonged state of meditation and then emerged enlightened but there are plenty of stories of kings and commoners who followed this. Judging by the lifestyle around us it would seem that most of us are still in the stage of consumption but each one of us has the power to take the leap to the next stages. Something for us to munch on?

(*bramhacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and sannyasa are the four stages of life)